


have you ever just wanted to hate someone?

by bloodredcherries



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 11:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13880223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodredcherries/pseuds/bloodredcherries
Summary: Patrick comes home.





	have you ever just wanted to hate someone?

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this story takes place during 1987. Therefore the name of the LA Angels has been changed to reflect the fact that at that time they were the California Angels. In addition the World Series that Jeff mentions in the story was the 1986 World Series.

It had started off as such a good day. The knowledge that he would be going to college after all had been such a comfort to Charlie that even going to school hadn’t been a drag. Sure, he and his friends could hardly wait until graduation, but he could suck it up for a few more days. Yeah. It _had_ been a good day. Emphasis on past tense.

 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” His stepmother cooed at him, breaking the silence that had been ongoing for the past - well it felt like an hour- several minutes. Since he had opened the front door to see her and Patrick just...standing there, looking like neither of them had a care in the world.

 

Like Patrick in Stoneybrook was _normal_ or something.

 

Like he _hadn’t_ left them without a trace when Charlie was _eight years old._

 

“I don’t understand why you left,” Charlie said, leveling a serious gaze at his biological father, arms crossed over his chest. “Or why you’re even here!” He exclaimed, letting his irritation get the better of him.

 

Patrick’s sudden appearance in Stoneybrook had put Charlie in a decidedly foul mood. “I thought I made it clear that it was over between us when I went out to California? Remember? When I didn’t want to ruin your _wedding_?”

 

Charlie’s tone was pointed. He fixed a sweet smile on his face as he gazed in Zoey’s direction. It wasn’t her fault, after all. At least, he couldn’t blame her. Not really.

 

It wasn’t _her_ fault that the man she had married was an utter asshole that had abandoned his children without a single goodbye, and only occasional calls and cards.

 

“What?” Patrick asked, a confused look visible on his face. “Can’t a father see his own kids graduate?”

 

Charlie wanted to say that his _father_ \- Watson Brewer - had already been planning on seeing him and Kristy graduate from their respective schools, but he decided not to purposely pick a pointless fight between him and Patrick on McLelland Road, directly across the street from where Karen was playing in the front yard of the Papadakis house. Anger - justified anger - or not, he sensed doing so was asking for trouble.

 

No matter how much he thought Patrick deserved it.

 

“Besides,” Patrick continued, an obnoxious smirk on his face, “when your sister invited us, she mentioned we could see David Michael. That oughta give the kid a thrill.”

 

Charlie gaped.

 

He blinked rapidly at Patrick, certain he had misunderstood.

 

“Kristy? Invited you?”

 

Zoey nodded. “She said it would be a nice surprise.”

 

“And you _listened_ to her?” Charlie exclaimed, much louder than he had intended, and clearly much angrier than either Patrick or Zoey had anticipated. He didn’t much care. It was one thing for Kristy to want Patrick and Zoey to come to Stoneybrook to see them graduate -- she was _fourteen_ \-- it was another thing entirely to find out that two full grown adults, one of whom (Zoey) should have definitely known better and the other one (Patrick) who was less mature than Andrew’s hermit crabs and probably had the emotional capacity of a fourteen year old -- had decided that indulging her was better than picking up the telephone and calling. It wasn’t like Patrick didn’t know their number. “Kristy is _fourteen_ ,” he continued. “Of _course_ she would think that it would be a nice surprise, because she’s fourteen years old and _you_ do ridiculous things like _visit her and force her to keep it a secret_.”

 

Charlie was so _tired_ of being the child that had to parent the parent. It was one thing stepping up to be the ‘man of the house’ when Patrick had up and left and his mom had been left alone to raise four children including a _baby_. At least then being mature for his age had had a purpose. This was just...this was completely ridiculous.

 

“I did that because I knew how your mother would overreact,” Patrick said, his tone defensive. “She would have pulled the same tone you’re pulling now!”

 

“Because we both know that this is another childish stunt!” Charlie exclaimed. “I don’t care what Kristy thought was a good idea or what hair brained scheme you concocted up using her _naïveté_ to get your way _yet again_ , the fact that we didn’t even warrant a telephone call before you showed up shows me that my mother is allowed to speak to you in whatever tone she sees fit.”

 

Vaguely (the part of Charlie that was acknowledging this was inwardly screaming), Charlie could see that the conversation between him and Patrick and Zoey was drawing the attention of a small crowd. He didn’t much care about appearances at that moment.  

 

“I _waited_ for you to come back,” he choked out. “I waited for _months,_ Dad. For a letter, for a visit, for a _damn phone call._ You just left without a goodbye. But for months if you had come home I would have welcomed you back. You were my _father._ I was a _kid._ ”

 

“I-“

 

“You _never even called_. Didn’t you care about us at all? Did we mean anything to you?”

 

“That’s why I invited you to our wedding,” Patrick said in response, his stepmother nodding in agreement.

 

“Screw your damn wedding,” Charlie snapped, barely recognizing his own tone. “I’m so tired of you bragging about inviting 75% of your children to your wedding to stepmother number 3. Or is it 4?” It was a low blow and Charlie knew it. “You can’t just _show up_ once a decade and expect everything to be okay!”

 

“I know that you came up and visited Kristy,” he muttered. “Didn’t you think that there was something wrong with having her keep that a secret? Do you think that was fun for her?”

 

Patrick shrugged. “She didn’t seem to mind.”

 

“Because she thought you were moving back here! I might have put up with that too when I was her age!”

 

It had taken Charlie a while to become completely disillusioned by his father, mainly because the delusion that Patrick Thomas could possibly come back one day had gotten him through some of the things that he and his siblings had had to deal with _because_ of Patrick leaving. He had hoped that it was a bad practical joke gone wrong for _years_ and that one day Patrick was going to walk through the front door and take back his job at the _Stoneybrook_ _News_ and they were going to be a family again. A real family, with a mom and a dad and a dog. Like the Joneses, or the Kishis. So he really couldn’t blame Kristy for wanting that, or at least believing him when he told her that he thought he was going to get his job at the newspaper back. And, to a fourteen year old, the thought of keeping someone a secret from someone wasn’t _that_ ridiculous a thought. Ideally, Kristy would have had her suspicions raised, but he understood where _she_ was coming from. The fact that Patrick had taken advantage of her was frankly unsurprising and the fact that Zoey had gone along with it was disappointing.

 

“So...you don’t want to go with us to the game?”

 

Patrick was brandishing what appeared to be tickets to the evening’s Mets game.

 

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” he muttered. “ _No_ , I don’t want to go.”

 

It _had_ been childish of Charlie to drive off in the Junk Bucket, leaving an apparently shocked Patrick and Zoey in his wake, but, as far as he was concerned, childish behavior was _more_ than Patrick deserved. After ten years -- _ten years!_ \-- Patrick thought that it was perfectly acceptable to waltz back into his life with the unwanted news that he would not only be at Kristy’s graduation, but his own? And the Mets tickets added insult to injury, at least in Charlie’s mind. Despite his best efforts to _become_ a Mets fan and abandon the baseball team that Patrick Thomas had taught his eldest child to love, Charlie was still a born-and-bred Yankees fan. Would he have agreed to the tickets if they had been for the Yanks? Possibly. He might have been able to set aside his principles for the right seats. Lord knew that Patrick had enough experience with setting aside principles.

 

There was a part of Charlie that was mad at Kristy, too. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he was upset with his sister, but she _was_ fourteen. She ran a successful business, for Pete’s sake. He didn’t understand why she had thought that inviting Patrick and Zoey on the sly was a good idea.

 

 _She’s only a kid_ , the little voice inside his head reminded him, much to his non-amusement. He still didn’t think that Kristy was _entirely_ innocent in this debacle. But, she _was_ only a kid. No matter how mature she seemed sometimes. She was a kid, who wanted her dad at her middle school graduation. It seemed sort of selfish for him to begrudge her that.

 

He was still bitter, though. Everyone else seemed to be afterthoughts to Patrick, at least compared to Kristy. He had needed a father, too. Now, of course, he had one in Watson, but that didn’t erase the years of hurt he’d felt at Patrick, and at his decision to abandon their family.

 

Sometimes, Charlie wondered what life would have been like if his father hadn’t left, if his parents hadn’t gotten a divorce. At one point, he had assumed that they would have been in love forever, but, as he’d matured, his belief in that fantasy had dwindled. That was what it _was_ , after all. A stupid fantasy by someone who didn’t realize that it hadn’t been love that had brought his parents together, but rather the fact that his mother had been expecting _him_ . Who even knew if Patrick and his mother would have even _gotten_ married if she hadn’t been pregnant? He supposed the fact that Patrick had done what was expected of him at that time was something that the man probably prided himself, but Charlie wasn’t particularly proud of it. Especially given how _easily_ he had thrown _everything_ away.

 

And Patrick thought _Mets_ _tickets_ would make up for it? As far as he was concerned, he could go screw. They didn’t need him and Charlie had made his peace with Patrick when he had gotten married, he certainly didn’t want to go to a baseball game with him and his stepmother and play ‘happy family’.

 

Happy family. What a joke. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time they had been happy.

 

He couldn’t do this. The thought about being a potential partner in a secret of Patrick’s was too much for him to bear, and the very real thought that his reaction would lead to Patrick springing this “surprise” on everyone else in a public forum had come to his mind. He _needed_ to tell someone. An actual adult, one that could maintain some form of neutrality.

 

He parked the car, steeled himself, and headed up the driveway to the Schafer-Spier house. He rang the doorbell, trying to figure out what he was going to say. It had been awhile since he had gone to Mr. Spier for advice. He hoped that he would still give it to him.

 

Charlie went to ring the doorbell again, the seriousness of the situation at hand outweighing his desire to not walk into a potential lecture from Mr. Spier about the importance of patience or something along those lines, when it opened slowly, revealing a kid that looked to be a couple years younger than Kristy standing there, a bored look on his face. He briefly wondered if he had managed to find his way to the wrong house, before he remembered that Mary Anne had mentioned Dawn and Jeff were visiting from California, and that they were in town for the summer. Had Charlie ever met Jeff? He wasn’t sure. But the blonde in front of him was obviously Mary Anne’s stepbrother.

 

“She left,” Jeff supplied. “If you’re looking for Kristy, I mean.”

 

“I’m not,” Charlie said. “Is your f-” At the look on Jeff’s face, Charlie quickly reversed course. “Mr. Spier,” he settled on. “Is he here?”

 

“My _father_ ,” Jeff drawled, as he crossed his arms defensively against his chest, “is back h-in California.”

 

Charlie felt guilty. It was difficult for him to remember that even though he desired a fatherly relationship with _his_ stepfather, other people actually had parents that still cared about them after their marriages ended, and that it probably wasn’t a good thing to default to them _not_ having parents that cared about them. And he _knew_ that Dawn and Jeff’s father actually cared about them -- he would have had to to host the majority of the BSC at his house for two weeks, not to mention to subject himself to a road trip with half of them -- it was just hard for him to fathom that similar situations like fathers in California could lead to such dramatically different results.

 

“I-”

 

“It’s whatever,” he shrugged. “Richard’s here, if you really want to see him.”

 

Charlie nodded. “Where is he?”

 

Jeff shrugged again. “In there, somewhere,” he said. “I guess you can come in, whatever.”

 

“I didn’t mean any-”  


“I told you,” he said. “It’s whatever.”

 

He followed the younger boy into the house, certain that Jeff was walking at the speed of light to prove that it wasn’t, in fact, whatever. Or maybe Jeff was hoping that if he made himself scarce while providing his stepfather a distraction in Charlie he could get away with something he normally couldn’t.

 

“Wait,” he said. “You said you saw Kristy today?”

 

“Yeah,” Jeff replied. “She was around.”

 

“Where did she say she was going?” Jeff rolled his eyes at the question, and Charlie almost wanted to ask him what it was like being a normal preteen that _could_ roll his eyes at everything, rather than needing to know things like what his sister was getting herself up to.

 

“The _Dodgers_ game,” he groused. “All she could talk about was how she couldn’t wait to see the _Dodgers_ . The Dodgers _blow_.”

 

“I hate the Mets,” he found himself supplying.

 

“But they won the Series,” Jeff breathed. “They _beat the Sox_.”

 

“I hope they lose,” he said bitterly. It was juvenile but it would serve Patrick right.

 

“I’m a California Angels dude,” Jeff supplied. “I could never support the Dodgers. It’s not right.”

 

“You watching the game tonight?” He found himself asking. “It’s local.”

 

Charlie sensed he was potentially setting Richard up for twice the aggravation by mentioning that to Jeff, but the younger kid seemed pleased with that information. “I wanna see them kick some Yank…” Jeff started to say, before trailing off. “I want to see them _win_ ,” he settled on. “And show good sportsmanship.”

 

“That’s better, Jeff,” he heard Mr. Spier said, his tone slightly chiding. “I suppose you may watch this evening’s game.” He cleared his throat. “Hello, Charlie,” he continued. “It’s nice to see you. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting you.”

 

The momentary levity that discussing baseball had given him slipped away at the older man’s words, and Charlie became rather interested in the ground.

 

“I didn’t realize you were busy,” he settled on. It seemed awkward to bring up his troubles with his... _Patrick_ in mixed company. He didn’t know what the Schafers knew about Patrick Thomas, if they knew anything at all. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come by.”

 

“I’m not busy,” Richard said. “We were about to sit down for dinner, but you’re welcome to join us. After, we can discuss what’s troubling you?”

 

Charlie wasn’t certain if he was capable of eating anything, let alone enough of the dinner that Sharon Spier had prepared to seem polite, but he found himself nodding in agreement. What else could he do, after all? Go home? He was certain that a number of lectures would be awaiting him, and he was more than willing to postpone the possibility of seeing either of the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Thomas.

 

“If I’m not any trouble,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t want to put any of you out, or anything.”

 

Richard gave him an appraising look. “Really, Charlie, it’s not a problem. You’re always welcome.”

 

The sad part was that Charlie automatically believed him, the father of his kid sister’s best friend, when he hadn’t believed his own father in the slightest. Wasn’t that just _depressing_?

 

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll stay for dinner.”

  


***

  


“I thought you’d be at the baseball game,” Mary Anne heard herself saying to Charlie, in a desperate attempt to break the awkward silence that had enveloped the dining room as they had gotten settled in at the dinner table. It wasn’t that Charlie’s presence was _awkward_ , per se, it was just...well, Kristy had told Mary Anne one thing and the fact that Charlie was sitting there eating Sharon’s latest attempt at a meat-substitute casserole told her quite the opposite. “Kristy said…”

 

“No,” he replied, his tone brusquer than she was used to, and she pursed her lips, saying nothing in response. “I hate the Mets.”

 

The silence returned, while she struggled to voice a response that didn’t betray the complete level of confusion that she was currently experiencing. Mary Anne Spier wasn’t used to being confused, at least not to this extent, and the fact that she was so confused was unsettling. Didn’t Mr. Thomas visiting trump Charlie’s hatred of the Mets? This wasn’t a situation that she herself would _ever_ get to experience, but she thought that it would make sense to put team loyalty aside to see your parent that you only kept in touch with through letter-writing, and the occasional postcard or telephone call.

 

Dawn had managed to score herself a sitting job that evening, so Mary Anne realized that her only hope in understanding the complexities of a divorced child was by asking Jeff, who was contentedly eating his and the equivalent of two others’ portions of the the meal. She supposed she _could have_ asked her father or Sharon, but, well, Jeff _was_ the one whose parents had gotten a divorce, so she reckoned he would understand most of all.

 

“I don't understand,” she said, directing her question at Jeff. “What if Jack wanted to take you to that game?”

 

“Why would Dad take me to a Dodgers game?” Jeff asked, staring at her like she had two heads. “I told you, we’re _Angels_ fans. The Angels are playing, he would take us to see them. _Duh_.”

 

“You _knew_?” Charlie asked, the brusqueness of his tone slipping into something that sounded utterly despondent. Mary Anne felt her stomach twist, and it wasn’t because of the casserole. “I don’t understand.”

 

“ _You_ don’t understand either?” Jeff demanded, obviously stuck on Mary Anne’s lack of baseball knowledge, the younger boy seemed unaware that the temperature in the room had cooled about ten degrees and that their parents were staring at themselves wearing expressions of disbelief that would have been comical had the _reason_ they were expressing the disbelief not been the least amusing thing in existence.

 

Charlie, clearly sensing that the group’s attention was on him, started attacking his portion of food with exaggerated vengeance, as if that would distract Mary Anne’s father from picking apart their conversation.

 

“Charlie --” He started to say. “Mary Anne, what are you talking about?”

 

Mary Anne wiped her palms discreetly on her skirt, recognizing that, while she might not be in trouble, her father was waiting for a response form her of some sort. A _satisfactory_ response.

 

“Their dad is here,” she said softly, eying the tablecloth with interest. “He and Kristy, they planned it out. I never thought that it was a secret,” she stressed, briefly looking her father in the eyes, before becoming quite interested in the contents of her water glass. “I thought that Mr. Thomas was in touch with _everyone_. Not just Kristy.”

 

“When we ran into Kristy’s dad at Candlemakers Park,” she elaborated, stumbling over the name, “ _Candlestick_ Park,” she corrected herself, “he told us that he would be in touch with Kristy, with everyone. We only saw him for a moment but I thought that he held up his promise. Because he _has_ been keeping in touch with her, Dad. He sends her letters and sometimes he even calls her.”

 

She sighed. “Kristy told me that they were coming up for our graduation, and I didn’t think anything of it,” she admitted. “It’s not an excuse, but it seemed...normal to have him come up for something like a graduation.”

 

“Kristy told him to keep it a secret,” Charlie muttered, stabbing the casserole with his fork as he did. “He and Zoey showed up today and thought that I would just be okay with it. Like tickets to a baseball team that I _hate_ would make up for being abandoned like I was garbage or make me feel like I mattered at all. I hate the Mets and he _knows_ that, or at least he knew it the last time he _was_ my dad.”

 

“That was a long time ago,” he added, and Mary Anne suspected it was mainly for Sharon and Jeff’s benefit, or perhaps their benefit was a side benefit of Charlie’s need for a safe space to vent about his father without being subjected to Kristy’s judgement. “I was _eight_ , okay?”

 

“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “If I had known it was a secret --”

 

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said, offering her a sad smile, before letting his fork clatter on the table. (Mary Anne’s father said nothing in response to something that no one else would have gotten away with.) “It’s just typical of him. I will always be last in his mind.”

 

“Or -- no, wait, I’ll be _second_ to last. At least he _acknowledges_ me.” He snorted. “What an _honor_ . I get to be the one that he _acknowledges_ . David Michael has no _idea_ how lucky he is. At least Patrick doesn’t get the chance of being a _continual disappointment_ to him.”

 

“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Spier,” he said. “Maybe I should just go.”

 

“It’s alright.” Sharon was the first to recover herself. “No one is saying you have to leave, or that you’re not allowed to be upset. Or confused. I myself am confused because I would never allow that behavior. Not yours.”

 

“You were super pi...mad when Dawn stole Dad’s credit card and booked a flight here,” Jeff recalled, his tone amused as he recounted the memory. Mary Anne bit back a sigh. “So if you and Dad got along enough to realize _that_ was like...rhinohensible or something, why doesn’t Kristy’s dad?”

 

“Reprehensible, Jeffrey,” her father corrected, though she sensed by his tone that his heart wasn’t into it. “Actually, that word is the perfect word to use to describe Patrick Thomas, your questionable pronunciation aside.”

 

“It’s not like it’s not true,” Charlie interjected. “He leaves a path of destruction akin to a rhino wherever he goes.” He sighed. “I just...I wish I understand what I did.”

 

“You didn’t do anything, Charlie,” Richard insisted. “It’s never the children’s fault when their parents get divorced, despite your best efforts to convince me that your father leaving was your fault, it was not your fault back then and it continues to not be your fault now. No matter _how_ old you are, you are the child here, not the parent. It wasn’t your fault or Sam’s, or Kristy’s or David Michael’s, just like I would certainly never tell Dawn or Jeff their parents’ divorce was their fault; nor would I tell that to Stacey McGill.”

 

“I asked him to play baseball with me when he needed to write an article for work,” Charlie said softly. “I should never have asked him. He wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t asked him.”

 

“It was a coincidence,” she heard herself say. “You couldn’t have known what he would decide to do independent of what you asked him to do. You were _eight_ , Charlie.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” he said. She watched him draw the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his face, obviously an attempt to hide the tears she could see in his eyes. Part of Mary Anne wanted to throttle Kristy, best friend or not. The other part wanted to throttle Mr. Thomas, even though he was an adult and theoretically an authority figure. “I was eight.”

 

“It sounds like he sucks,” Jeff supplied. “I mean, if Nicky Pike asks me to play catch, I don’t have my mom send me home, or steal her MasterCard to escape in the dead of night.”

 

Jeff’s comment — much to Mary Anne’s shock — seemed to break the tension. Charlie started to chuckle, and even her dad and Sharon had looks of amusement on their faces.

 

“I have an idea,” her father said after a moment. “You and Jeffrey can have command over the television for your baseball game, while Sharon and I figure out how to best handle this, Charlie. No protesting!” He continued, as Charlie opened his mouth. “I am perfectly capable of contacting your mother. Lord knows I’ve done it enough times.”

 

“I’ll watch it with you,” Mary Anne added. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do, really. She had been planning an evening of knitting after dinner, and she could just as easily work on the blanket that she was making for Dawn and Jeff’s half sister or brother that was on the way in the living room while she pretended to be interested in the game.

 

“I’m sorry for ruining your dinner,” Charlie said once the three of them were seated in the living room, the baseball game fully underway. “And whatever you had wanted to do after your dinner, because I don’t think it was watching this.” He gestured to the television.

 

“You don’t need to apologize,” she assured him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, before she resumed her knitting at a furious rate. “Honestly... I don’t blame you for being upset. I’m the one that should be apologizing.”

 

Mary Anne could have killed Kristy for neglecting — knowing her, purposely — to inform her that the plans that she’d been discussing in detail for _weeks_ were in any way secretive. Honestly, hadn’t Kristy learned her lesson? Apparently not.

 

“I really am sorry, Charlie,” she said. “I just... wanted to think the best of him, especially given that he had invited you to his wedding.”

 

“I know you did,” he said. “I thought he had changed too. Or at least was trying. I thought we’d reached an understanding. Who are you making that for?”

 

They lapsed into silence, the only noises in the room coming from the televised game and the sound of her knitting needles. The clacking of the needles was soothing to her, which was a good thing since she was terribly on edge. Patrick Thomas scared her, and she didn’t much like his insistence on a secret relationship with Kristy. She would feel the same way if Jack had insisted on a secret relationship with Dawn or Jeff, no matter that the situations were different because Jack and Sharon at least could coexist semi successfully in the same room, and they had even blended their families enough that she could do things like visit Dawn and Jeff in California and make baby blankets for their future sister or brother; while she doubted highly that Charlie would experience anything on that level. No matter how much it bothered her to think of how Charlie, Sam, and David Michael were treated by the man who was supposedly their father. Mary Anne didn’t understand that, and she did not think she ever would.

 

She continued to knit, more furiously than she’d done before.

 

***

 

It wasn’t the ideal solution that Charlie had anticipated when he had opened up to Mr. and Mrs. Spier (that solution had involved a one way trip back to California for at the very least Patrick, even if it had to be courtesy of Watson’s millions), but Charlie had forced himself to tolerate his father as little as possible, mainly for the sake of maintaining the peace that a non-irate Kristy was capable of co-existing with.

 

He thought it was absolutely ridiculous that his mother had even allowed Patrick and Zoey to stay, potentially angry Kristy or not. He definitely wouldn’t have allowed it.

 

But, at least, it was almost over. The new Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Thomas would be leaving the next day, and not a moment too soon as far as Charlie was concerned.

 

“I don’t understand why you ruined our surprise,” he could hear Patrick say in an outraged tone, his ire unfortunately directed at Louisa Kilbourne, who just looked bemusedly at him. “All I ever wanted was to catch a break with these damn kids!”

 

Charlie forced himself to ignore him, choosing instead to approach Mary Anne, who seemed to be doing her best impersonation of the steps on Watson’s back porch. He dropped down beside her, offering her one of the cans of soda he’d gotten before his father had gotten too close for comfort.

 

“Kristy is mad at me,” Mary Anne supplied, and he opened his mouth to apologize before he noticed she was rolling her eyes. “It’s so ridiculous. I didn’t even do anything.”

 

“She’s going to California with them,” he muttered lowly. “She wants to give a summer with them a shot.”

 

“What about you?” She asked.

 

“Wasn’t even invited.”

 

“Did you want to be?” She pressed, before taking a delicate sip of the soda. Charlie shrugged.

 

“It would have been nice to be thought of? Considered even?” He admitted. He sighed. “I wouldn’t have said yes though. Even if I had been. Asked.”

 

“Your brothers?”

 

He shook his head. Mary Anne sighed. “So she’s being _rewarded_ for this?” Charlie nodded, and he ran his hands through his hair. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”

 

“She told Mom and Watson how she wanted the chance to get to know Zoey and how this summer would be the perfect time for her to get to spend time with her and Patrick with the club breaking up and all and all this bull,” he recounted. “Mom and Watson were annoyed that she went behind their backs but she convinced them it showed initiative. I just don’t get it.” He took a sip of his drink. “Patrick _left_ us, and he made that decision to never come back, and Kristy thinks that she needs to get to _know_ him?”

 

“And then she brought up your step-siblings like there was _any_ similarities between their situations. Like because Dawn and Jeff get to live with their father _my mother_ shouldn’t stand in her way from wanting a summer with _our_ father.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be bitter,” he said. “Patrick wants to have a relationship with Kristy, and I should be grateful he doesn’t want one with me. And, I shouldn’t begrudge Dawn and Jeff their relationship with _their_ father, even though it irks me that I won’t have one with mine.”

 

“Do you _want_ a relationship with Patrick?” Mary Anne asked, blinking in confusion.

 

“I used to,” he admitted. “When I was younger. When I hoped that he would come back. But now...I don’t need that. I _have_ a father, in Watson, whether I call him Dad or not.”

 

“Maybe your mom is right,” she suggested. “Maybe this is what Kristy needs, to get it out of her system.”

 

Charlie wasn’t hopeful that the visit would just ‘get it out of Kristy’s system’.

 

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I just...I don’t have to like it, do I?”

 

Mary Anne shook her head. “Of course not,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Sometimes things just happen, Charlie. Whether we like them or not.”

 

“Kinda used to that,” he said softly. He felt her squeeze his arm.

 

“It’s going to be alright,” she told him. “You’re going to go off to college, and you aren’t going to have to see Patrick again if you don’t want to. Even if you do go to UCLA. California is a big state, you know. And Kristy will be alright. She’s always managed to be before.”

 

“Thanks, Mary Anne.”

 

“You don’t have to thank me,” she demurred.

 

Charlie impulsively squeezed her shoulder.

  



End file.
